Angeles Chapter "people power" scores another big win at San Onofre

by Glenn Pascall, Chair

Sierra Club Angeles Chapter Task Force on San Onofre

 

 

On September 5, environmental and consumer groups got the best news about
San Onofre since the troubled nuclear plant was shut permanently in June
2013.

 

Mike Florio, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) lead
commissioner on San Onofre, announced that "big changes" were needed in a
proposed settlement that would dump on utility customers the entire $3.1
billion economic loss from shutting the plant a decade earlier than planned.
Florio said the settlement must be revised to make it significantly more
favorable to consumers.

 

The settlement proposal had been presented to the CPUC at a hearing in
mid-June, endorsed by its staff and by persons claiming to be ratepayer
advocates. But in fact this  "solution" was the outcome of a weak
negotiating team using a flawed process. 

 

At the hearing the Angeles Chapter protested the proposal, and we followed
up with over 3,000 letters by Chapter members to CPUC Commissioners. These
letters asked the CPUC, since when does the American economic system make
consumers, rather than shareholders, pay for a company's management errors
and lapses? 

 

Cynics said our letters would have no effect because CPUC acceptance of the
proposed settlement was a done deal and any other input was just for show.
Florio proved the cynics wrong. He also confirmed the validity of our
approach, which it to organize expressions of public concern on a mass scale
with the goal of making it as difficult as possible for decision-makers to
do the wrong thing. When they do the right thing, we publicly commend them. 

 

The CPUC situation was dramatic because Florio, with the backing of other
Commissioners, refused to accept his own staff's recommendation that was
supposedly endorsed by ratepayer advocates. For us, this was the second big
victory of Angeles Chapter "people power" at San Onofre.

 

History Repeats Itself

 

Back in May 2013 the shutdown of San Onofre was hanging by a thread. Staff
of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) had just recommended
approval of Southern California Edison's request for fast-track restart of
the plant to test its failed steam generator system prior to resuming full
operations. All the NRC commission had to do was back its own staff and San
Onofre would be back in operation.

 

At that point, Friends of the Earth attorneys found an NRC rule saying such
a test was an "experiment" requiring a license amendment. That meant a full
hearing process with an administrative law judge and independent experts
giving sworn testimony. 

 

The Angeles Chapter followed up swiftly with some 3,500 letters urging the
NRC not to cut corners, and warning of the damage to its public credibility
if it okayed fast-track restart rather than requiring hearings.

 

In a crucial two-week period that followed, the Commission made no move to
approve its staff recommendation. Edison threw in the towel, saying it could
not carry the plant's cost over months of process. That was the end of San
Onofre as an operating nuclear plant.

 

As the saying goes, victory has a thousand parents - and we were surely
among them. On the two big San Onofre issues - plant operating safety and
economic costs caused by management errors - Chapter members have spoken out
with big effect, proving that it matters to walk the talk, stay on the case,
and as Churchill said, to "never, never give up."

 

 


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